I woke to the director shouting: "Wake up sleepy head." He wagged his finger at me when I opened the door.

"And you doubted me!" he laughed. "New York! New York! Everything is possible here, even such a phone call."

He made me put on a suit and then we drove to a dark low building on the other side of town. It appeared to be some kind of restaurant-cabaret. It was hot and crowded inside and the air was bluish--almost more smoke than air. In the center of the dining room, just off the dance floor, an arc of lights had been set up around one of the tables. A cameraman was leaning on a chair, a cigarette dangling loosely in his lips and a coffin-sized Soviet camera balancing precariously on his shoulder. He snapped to attention when he saw us enter the room.

"Film our entrance!" the director shouted at him. Someone took my arm. I looked over and saw Irina posing next to me in a purple-sequined evening gown. The three of us fell into a flying V with the director leading us slowly down the steps toward the lights. People at the other tables watched and the cameraman back-pedaled in front of us zooming in and out constantly.

"Try to smile," Irina said to me out of the corner of her mouth.

"What is this?"

"Shh. It's the news," the director whispered.

"What news?"

"You're the news. This is quite an event--the forging of a business partnership between your company and--" The cameraman tripped over one of the power cords and fell back into the lights. Pop, pop, pop--all three bulbs broke and blew out the restaurant's circuit breaker. The smell of burnt hair wafted into the air.

"Damn you!" the director shouted in the darkness. A laugh flitted around the restaurant and in a few moments the auxiliary house lights came up dimly. The director pulled the cameraman up off the ground and hounded him over to another table. Irina glared at the scene, infuriated.

"Ruined again," she said to herself.

Irina and I took our seats while the director was forced to sit at the restaurant owner's table and make his apologies. Irina caught my eye briefly and then turned her face back to the dance floor. She had painted two stripes over each eye--one stripe was thick and blue. The other was narrow and violet and extended almost to her ears. It looked weird. I couldn't help staring. As I stared, though, I saw again how the light entered her pupils along a familiar pathway. Her lids rose high in the center and then slanted off sharply at each corner belying the imposition of a Mongol gene sometime in deep her family's past. And I felt myself growing angry at her--at the way she took in the room with the haughty, cheated look of a deposed conqueror. It was so arrogant, so completely Katya-like, that her strange make-up job seemed more like a disguise at a masqued ball than a unique personal fashion statement.

"If you're going to keep staring at me," Irina said suddenly, "try not to look so miserable." She drew a new cigarette from a pack and waited patiently until I realized she wanted me to light it for her. I fired the director's lighter, and a cloud of dirty gasoline tainted the air. She dipped down toward the flame.

"Never make a woman bend for a light," she said after she French-inhaled the first puff. "Never make a woman do anything that isn't graceful."

"I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."

"Oh, you're thinking all right. You seem to be thinking about something very important. I wonder what it is you're thinking about."

"Your eyes probably."

"My eyes probably or my eyes for sure?"

"Probably, for sure."

"'Probably for sure'?" she said with one dark eyebrow raised. "What exactly is your specialty?"

"Specialty?"

"Yes, your area of qualification."

"We don't really have that in America."

"You mean you have no higher education?"

"No, no. I do. But I have kind of a . . . kind of a general specialty."

"A general specialty. Interesting."

"Why? What's your . . . specialty?"

"Metallurgy," she said. She used all the curves of her mouth as she drew out the word. Then she made an "O" with her lips and blew out a smoke ring.

"Mostly I like to read though," she added. "I read all the time. I bet I've read more than you have."

"Probably," I said.

"I'm sure of it," she said. "I read all day long. You should read more. It's attractive for a man to be well read. You wouldn't think it, but the director of our television station--Timofey Arkadevich over there--he's read everything. And he writes poetry, too."

We were silent again for a minute. She smiled at me for the first time. I glanced at her breasts. They were exposed almost to the nipple by the deep V in her dress that started at her shoulders and stopped just short of her navel.

"Is it good?" I asked.

"Is what good?"

"The director's poetry."

"Oh, that. No. It's no good," she said.

There was a blare of music and the emcee came on stage to announce the beginning of the floor show. The first act was a People's Artist from the Great October Regional Ballet in Krasnoyarsk. She came out leading a small dog.

"You know, I have to tell you something," Irina said, her eyes fixed on the animal. "When I first saw you today, when I saw you walk into my room, I had a very strong feeling about you. I was thinking, I could make love to you. 'I could reveal myself to that man,' I said to myself right then and there. I had it all pictured in my mind. I saw you undressing me in your hotel room after dinner. I felt your hands on my softest parts. It was all very easy to see."

The ballerina balanced first on one foot, then on two hands, then on one hand. She whistled. The little dog leaped up on her chin. It stepped over to her chest and walked a jittery circle over the bottoms of her breasts. The dancer moved her body expertly making sure it was not too sharply angled. This allowed the dog to continue its progress up her stomach and balance for a short rest on her pubic bone.

"So I thought," Irina continued, "'let's see where this can go.' And I asked you right away, do you remember? I asked you if you were married. Do you remember what you said?"

"Not really."

"That's right. You said 'not really.' You know, that's the worst thing you could have said."

The little dog caught his breath and started to walk up the ballerina's thighs until it got a paw hold on her kneecaps. It pulled itself up, took a breath, and then started up the last narrow passage. But on the way to her feet, the dog lost its nerve and looked out at the crowd.

"'Not really?'" Irina said in disgust. "What's that supposed to mean? If you had told me that you were married, I would have understood. 'Fine, I have other commitments too,' I'd have thought. 'Let's enjoy each other for this one night.' On the other hand, if you had said that you weren't married, well then I would have wanted you even more. I might have even thought we could go farther. But you said, 'not really.' My God, what a cowardly thing to say."

The dog on the dancer's calves craned his head toward me and whimpered. "Do something!" he seemed to be saying. But just then a woman in a glitter jacket and top hat strode out on stage. She held a biscuit above the ballerina's feet. The dog leaped for it. He chewed and swallowed and when he looked up he saw that in lunging for the biscuit he had put himself safely atop the ballerina's soles. The audience applauded. The dog whined. The ballerina punched him up in the air with her feet, flipped over, and caught him before he hit the ground. Then she bowed to the crowd and skipped into the wings.

"You see, Daniel, I've been thinking about you all afternoon," Irina continued. "I've been thinking about you in a physical sense and in a psychological sense. And I've decided that you have a problem. The problem with you is that you have--"

"I know. I know. I have a weak character."

"Yes. A weak character. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's also a soft and gentle character. You just have to be careful who you marry. Who did you marry by the way?"

"You've decided I am married, after all."

"Of course," she said and stubbed out her spent filter. She flashed an amused, condescending smile at me.

"Okay," I said finally. "Her name is Katya. She's from St. Petersburg. She's Russian."

Irina's smile drifted into a frown. Then all at once, she burst out laughing. "I knew it. I knew it by the words you use. By that terrified look on your face."

I blushed and this seemed to soften her.

"Where is she now, your wife?" she asked.

"In America, I guess."

"You guess?"

"I'm not sure."

"Would you stop saying things like that? 'I guess,' and 'I think,' and 'maybe,' and 'I'm not sure.'"

"It's just the way I learned Russian."

"You learned it wrong. It's unattractive. You should relearn it."

"Fine, I'll go get my textbook."

"Nu, Daniel. Don't be insulted. I'm only having some fun. Seriously, now, tell me all about her. Tell me about this mysterious Katya."

I looked up and stared right into Irina's face. Her lips curved up at the corners and her eyes laughed at me even as they sparkled. This was not Katya staring back at me. If it had been, I would have felt cut down by that arrogant look. I would have puzzled endlessly over the engine behind it. I would have worried about how, if I'd said what was in my heart, I would have accidentally stripped a vital gear.

"Are you so ashamed to tell me about her?" Irina chuckled.

Ashamed? No. But how to put Katya into words? Actually, I had never even tried. So much of being with Katya was about sensing her, not seeing her. Either we were crushed up against each other and she was too close to focus on or she was retreating, disappearing--a vanishing point. As for the intimacies of our marriage--they were like a kind of secret wartime code that we were unauthorized to reveal to those outside our two-person army. And one-by-one all the people with whom I might have once discussed Katya had dropped away--my friends, my father, my brother, my mother. Even Katya was gone now. And as I looked up at Irina--this weird Katya simulacrum who had made up her mind that she would never sleep with me because I had an irrevocably weak character--I realized that she was now the most intimate relation I had in the world.

"Well?" Irina asked smiling through the smoke.

I told her everything. I told her about our engagement and our wedding. I told her about Katya's nineteenth century manners and her amalgamated religion and how she had beaten me at chess every single time but once. I told her about the night she first finished. I told her about her false pregnancy and her parents' many-gabled country house. I told her about the phone call I'd just made to New York and the man on the other end of the line who had demanded "Who's dat?"

"And what do I have now? This postcard, that's all," I said, showing the Great Salt Lake to Irina. "She asks me if she could belong to me. What does that mean? Is she asking me to come get her? I'm not really sure. I'm never sure. I'm not even really sure who she is. I've tried. I really have. I married, her for God's sake, but I still don't know."

Irina lit another cigarette, took a long inhale, and let the smoke come out her nose.

"You shouldn't try so hard. I can tell you who she is."

"You can?"

"Of course. She's a little Communist bitch."